


What Mad Pursuit

by MildredMost



Category: Romantic Poets RPF
Genre: Anal Sex, Bathing/Washing, Begging, Blow Jobs, Drunk Sex, Epic Poetry, Hand Jobs, Hats, Historical References, Letters, Light Bondage, M/M, Medical Procedures, Recreational Drug Use, Swimming, Wine, romantic poet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 12:34:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5456684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MildredMost/pseuds/MildredMost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Keats' career as a poet is on the very brink of taking off when he meets the aristocratic, irritating and very distracting Percy Shelley.  </p><p>  <i>“Run, John,” said Shelley, taking his arm and yanking him down the stairs, two at a time. They pelted past the crowd at the bottom of the stairs and the footmen at the door and burst out onto the street, gasping and laughing. </i></p><p>  <i>“How have you got so far in life without learning that the answer to "are you Lord Byron" is always "No, absolutely not"?” said Shelley. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	What Mad Pursuit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JPlash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JPlash/gifts).



 

_How many bards gild the lapses of time! A few of them have ever been the food, Of my delighted fancy,—I could brood, Over their beauties, earthly, or sublime: And often, when I sit me down to rhyme, These will in throngs before my mind intrude_

_\--------------------------_

 

John Keats clutched _The Examiner_ to himself with delight. Hunt had only gone and bloody done it. He looked at the page again. Yes, there it was, an article introducing three new and exciting poets: Shelley, Reynolds and “youngest of them all, and just of age...JOHN KEATS.” 

“Tom!” he roared. “TOM!” He paced to the window of his room and back again. 

His brother poked his head around the door. “Have you hurt yourself?” he asked mildly, “Have you a large hole in your skull somewhere?” 

“I feel as though nothing could ever hurt again,” Keats said. “Look.” He thrust the paper at Tom and collapsed into a chair. 

Tom’s eyes scanned the page. His eyebrows shot up into his hair. “GEORGE!” he yelled. He looked up at John and grinned. “My brother, the writer. Look,” he said and waved the paper under George’s nose as their brother joined them. George snatched it from him. 

“ _The composition_ ,” read George, “ _We do not hesitate to pronounce excellent_.” 

With a whoop John got up from his chair and did his celebratory fighting bear dance. 

“If Leigh Hunt could see you now,” Tom said, his chin propped on George’s shoulder as he continued to read, “He might not quite describe you as _a considerable addition of strength in the new school of poetry_ , He’d pack you off to Bedlam.” 

John paused his imaginary boxing match and looked down at himself. He was a little bloody, it had to be said. He had bought The Examiner on the way home from a shift at the hospital. 

“That monstrous old sawbones Lucas was on duty last night. Amputation. Hit an artery of course.”  He began to discard his bloodstained clothes, flinging them to all four corners of his room. “Oh, boys I feel so...I feel…” 

“ _Like some watcher of the skies; when a new planet swims into his ken_?” quoted George at him, still reading the article. John was not listening as he rushed around in his underwear, looking for a clean shirt. 

“I must visit Hunt, immediately. To thank him. He has made me all that I have ever wanted to be.” 

John’s head was spinning. All these years of hoping, of working into the night on his verse after back-breaking shifts at the hospital, of trying to make the right acquaintances so that his poems could be heard; and now it was all within his grasp. 

“John Keats, the new Lord Byron. When women begin to swoon at the sound of your sonnets I will make sure to be ready to catch them,” said Tom. 

“ _Give me women, wine and snuff_ ,” John began as he tugged on clean trousers, hopping on one leg. 

“ _Until I cry out “Hold; enough!”_ finished his brothers in unison. 

“Which has happened precisely never,” said George. “To any of us. Not the women part at least.” 

John could not even think of women as he stamped his boots on. He must see Hunt as soon as he could.

 

\----------------------

 

_Yet feel I little of the cool bleak air,_

_Or of the dead leaves rustling drearily,_

_Or of those silver lamps that burn on high,_

_Or of the distance from home’s pleasant lair:_

_For I am brimfull of the friendliness_

_That in a little cottage I have found._

 

\-------------------------

 

On the long walk to Hampstead he rehearsed what he would say to Hunt, how he would thank him, then petition him to publish more of his work. It was Sunday and the streets of Cheapside were quiet and empty. He turned his collar up against the December wind and checked for the thousandth time that he had his new compositions safely in his pocket. 

It was too wondrous that Leigh Hunt had chosen to publish his work in such a way. He could not help but hope that with a little more support from his influential friend he could leave medicine behind and lose himself in poetry entirely. 

He had known them all only a short time, but the Hunts were so welcoming, he did not worry about arriving unannounced. Hunt’s wife Marianne would make him up a bed on the couch if he stayed late, and her sister Bess would have cooked enough Sunday dinner for twenty. Perhaps Haydon, Hunt’s artist friend would be there, and they could make a party of it. 

He swung into an easy rhythm as he reached Camden Lock and clearer air. He had had a cough recently he couldn’t shake and the more time he spent away from the fug of the City, the better for it. 

It was dark by the time he reached Hunt’s cottage. There was a light in every window of the little house, which nestled on the edge of the Heath. The children inside were shrieking at a higher pitch than usual which usually meant visitors. He knocked. 

Hunt came to the door, still mid-sentence. “...Which cannot be the definition of freedom in this...why John!” 

“I hope I am not imposing, Leigh,” John began. He took off his hat and put it back on again, unsure.  Hunt took John’s hand and shook it enthusiastically. 

“But this is marvellous! Prodigious! Come in, please.” 

John took his hat off again and followed Leigh in. Two of Leigh’s children bolted past them and up the stairs emitting blood curdling screams, chased by a young woman with dark hair and sparkling eyes whom he’d never seen before. “I am a MONSTER and I’m going to CATCH you and EAT YOU UP!” she said, as merry as Puck. She hitched her skirts and took the stairs two at a time in pursuit. 

“That is Mary,” said Leigh as if John should know her. John followed Leigh to the parlour. 

A slim young man with exceptionally long legs and a mop of fair curls was sat upon the couch, his head buried in a book. 

“Shelley,” said Hunt, and John started.  “Here is John Keats, who I was speaking of earlier. It is not the most wonderful coincidence?” 

Shelley raised his large eyes slowly to John’s and uncurled his endless legs as if he were about to get up. 

_Shelley_. John hated him instantly. He was all languor and long limbs and careless aristocracy, with cheekbones higher than St Pauls Cathedral, a beautifully cut coat in the latest style, a haughty tilt to his chin and the smooth golden skin of someone who wintered on the Continent. 

Bastard. 

John felt short and insignificant and common in comparison. His coat was two years old and almost through at an elbow, and he was acutely aware of how mud-spattered he must be after marching across the Heath and how red in the face. He must try not to look intimidated. He was holding his hat by the brim in front of him like a cowering tradesman, frightened by the grand folk. In a spurt of silent rage, he flung the hat onto the piano and sat down abruptly. The idiotic hat rolled around and around and around, and Shelley watched it silently until it stopped. 

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr Keats,” Shelley said at last. John was about to regain his manners and reply, when the children burst back into the room and circled him twice, slapping him on the back, yelling “Junkets!” before running back out again. 

“What is it they say?” said Shelley. 

“I do not know,” said John, not wanting this cool, aristocratic stranger to know his nickname. “Perhaps it was part of the game they were playing with the young lady.” 

“That is Mary. My Mary. Is she not the most...she is Mary Godwin, you know.” 

Of course. He had heard of Shelley’s goings on, everyone had. The scandal of his abandoned wife and children would finish most men, but here he was; unconcerned and quite at ease, talking of his mistress. 

And looking at him eagerly, awaiting a response. 

“I did not quite meet her, she was engaged in terrorising the children,” said John and Shelley’s face lit with a smile which showed an unexpected dimple. He looked quite different when he smiled; his haughtiness was swept away, and his face softened entirely. John felt a sudden stab of attraction. My god, what now - he wanted to bed the man? He and half the women of England it seemed. 

“Leigh told me he was putting me in an article, so Mary and I thought we’d come to visit and Marianne invited us to stay.” He looked at Leigh. 

“As long as you wish,” said Leigh. “And I have your _‘Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’_ here. Somewhere. When I find it I shall write about that, too.” Leigh clutched his hair distractedly, looking at the piles of books and papers which littered the room. 

“Now John,” he said. “We have eaten, but Bess says you must too. Go to the kitchen and tell her tales of the hospital, you know how it fascinates her.” 

At that moment the children broke into yelling upstairs and Leigh stormed off to deal with them. Mary came downstairs at that moment and nodded to John who nodded back, but before he could think what to say, Shelley called on her. 

He went to the kitchen feeling a little like a dismissed schoolboy. For heaven’s sake. He’d hardly managed to say two words to Hunt. His household was chaotic enough at the best of times, and now Shelley was ensconced in his home for who knows how long. Leigh would probably forget all about putting more of John’s poetry in his newspaper, because who could help but be distracted by Mary and Shelley’s glamour and scandals? And Shelley could most likely produce a new poem every few days for Leigh, having no call on his time other than bedding women and visiting his tailor. Unlike himself who ground a poem out painfully over weeks, in between having to get up at 5am and stand all day in a cold operating room, cleaning up severed legs and vomit and shit and then coming home bloodstained and weary and having to eat cold tongue for supper. 

Oh, how he fucking wished he was a Lord. 

He knew his black mood was partly hunger, and anger that he could not have Hunt’s attention to himself. But it was too bad, he thought, too bad. Just when he had thought that a breakthrough would happen for him. He felt capable of such great things, if only he could grasp the opportunity to show them to the world. 

Bess was pleased to see him and gave him a large helping of steak and kidney pudding which cheered him greatly, and then complained about how untidy Shelley was, which cheered him even more. For a moment, anyway. 

“If he wasn’t so handsome I wouldn’t put up with it at all,” Bess continued, and sighed. “But when he turns those great eyes upon you like a set of gig lamps and then says something in that _voice_ of his, I don’t know where to put myself. You wouldn’t understand, Johnny.” 

_Oh, wouldn’t I_ , thought John and morosely put a large forkful of pudding in his mouth. 

Mary came in then. “Shelley wishes to know if he can have an apple,” she said. Her dark eyes darted to John, and back again to Bess. John, who had a huge mouthful of steak and kidney, could not say anything. 

“Oh he has remembered he has a stomach at last?” said Bess. 

“He forgets to eat,” Mary said, half to John. John nodded and tried to swallow. How typical; how _artistic_. Only those who have never had to worry about where their next meal was coming from could possibly forget to eat. He wished he could push his plate away unfinished, but he could not bring himself to; anyhow he was starving after working all day and the freezing two hour walk from Cheapside. He looked down and loaded his fork with food again, and by the time he looked up, she had gone. 

“He hardly eats a morsel,” remarked Bess, “And Marianne says he barely sleeps. How he keeps his pecker up with all these women I cannot fathom.” 

“ _Bess!”_ spluttered John, chuckling. “I am an innocent young man, spare my blushes please.” 

“Oh don’t give me that. I know what you medical students are like. Now let’s have a little drink shall we? Go back to the parlour, I shall bring it.” 

John got up and returned along the dark corridor to the parlour, but as he approached the doorway, he lingered just out of sight. He saw Mary standing over Shelley who was sat on the couch still and did not want to interrupt them. 

“Who is the young man with all the pretty hair and the clever face?” John could hear Mary asking and he felt a flush rise to his face. 

“Why, you are talking to him,” Shelley replied, sweeping her into his lap, and Mary laughed and kissed his forehead. 

“I mean the other one, in the kitchen, being fussed over by Bess. Another stray that Leigh has befriended?” 

“He is John Keats, my love. The other poet in Leigh’s article. I read you his poem, it is remarkable, is it not? When you consider that he works in the hospital all day amid death and disease and suffering.” 

“Does he really?” said Mary. “How interesting, I must talk to him of it. I should never have guessed it; he looks so poetic with all those curls. But perhaps he can assist me with my story - the one about the corpse, you know.” 

“He’d be glad to I’m sure. He has a kind face as well as a handsome one.” 

“I said clever, not handsome,” said Mary, pushing a stray curl back from Shelley’s face. “But I thought you’d think so.” 

“You know me too well. And I hope to befriend him. Having the background he does, he may need my help.” 

“Take him up as one of your causes?” 

“Perhaps. I’m sure he knows little about publishing.” 

So, thought John, he was to be taken up as a cause, out of pity for his lowly background and assumption of his ignorance. How infuriating. He might be only twenty one but Shelley was not so very much older than him. 

“You are very generous and I love you for it.” Mary hopped back off his lap and yawned. “Oh I must to bed.” 

John heard a tread behind him and was forced to enter the room then. Marianne, Leigh’s wife came in behind him. 

“Mary the children are settled now. At least, Leigh is thundering at them to be quiet and go to sleep so it should not take long. You can go up when you like my dear.” 

“Bysshe, dearest,” said Mary, “Marianne insists that I sleep in a proper bed in the children’s room. There is no room for you I am afraid.” 

“It is best in her condition. You do not sleep anyway, Shelley,” Marianne said briskly, “You pace the house like a caged tiger.” 

John knew that Shelley would have to take the couch in this case and he would have to leave. How irritating. “I should depart,” he said. “I thank you for dinner.” 

“Wherever are you going?” said Marianne. “You have only just arrived. Leigh and I were looking forward to speaking with you tonight. Look, here is Bess with some claret for you.” 

“Well, I cannot stay here...I mean Mr Shelley must…” 

“Oh what stuff, Johnny,” said Marianne. “Shelley does not sleep a wink, he roams and paces the night away, planning his revolutions. You can take the couch and that is an end to it.” 

“It is true Mr Keats, I do not sleep well,” said Shelley earnestly. “I will probably walk out under the stars, and think. So know that you can have the couch freely.” 

“Well. Thank you,” said John, feeling like the dullest person that had ever been. _I am a poet too_ , he wanted to say. _Perhaps I shall roam under the stars, thinking. Just because I eat steak and kidney pudding and like eight hours sleep a night in a comfortable bed, does not mean I am not poetic._

He had to stop being so ridiculous. Leigh ate cold potatoes in his shirt sleeves at the kitchen table and helped bathe the baby, and argued with the butcher’s boy about the bill, and everyone knew he was a poet just the same.  It didn’t matter. 

If only Shelley wasn’t so bloody glamorous though. 

Well, he wouldn’t get any hero worship from him. And he certainly wouldn’t allow him to take him under his wing and patronise him about publishing and the ways of the world. He would keep Shelley at arm’s length, that was all. He had too much pride to become the plaything of a rich young man who liked to pose as a revolutionary. 

He managed this at first. Leigh pulled him aside to talk about his work, asking if he had anything new to show him, and John spent a happy half hour drinking wine and going over his poems with him, selecting two more for The Examiner’s next issue. The knot of anxiety in his stomach unwound itself and he relaxed enough to glance over at Shelley. 

But Shelley took his glance as an invitation and crossed the room to sit by him. 

“Mr Keats, I have been eager to speak with you.” 

John squirmed in his chair a little. Seeing him across a room had been disconcerting enough, but in such proximity he felt overwhelmed. No wonder Shelley left a trail of heartbroken women littering the landscape wherever he went. It was not just the looks but the intensity of the stare Shelley levelled at him, unblinking, as if he were the most interesting person in the world. 

“I would very much like to see more of your work. Do you plan to publish?” 

“I…thought I would, perhaps.” he suddenly felt bone weary - the long shift at the hospital catching up with him. He was not equipped for this, not tonight. 

Shelley then swept him into a discussion of imagination versus purpose. John felt slightly delirious with exhaustion but fought his corner as best he could.  He could not help his mind wandering however. The whites of Shelley’s eyes were very clear, he noted, his teeth were present and regular, and his complexion even. All of which, by John’s medical training, spoke of excellent respiratory, circulatory and digestive systems. He was like a thoroughbred horse. 

“Imagination cannot be the only thing. There must be meaning. We do not live in a vacuum, unaffected by the political landscape,” Shelley said, leaning his elbows on his knees and looking at John intently. 

“In poetry it can be the only thing. Of course it can. Imagination and what you can feel with your immediate senses…” 

“What do your senses tell you just now?” Shelley said. 

“You have your own, what do they tell you?” John said, rubbing his eyes. Shelley’s eyes did not move from his face. John felt a jag of tired, abstract longing to feel Shelley’s mouth on him.  He tried to focus on what was being said. 

“I am curious about yours.” 

“It is hard,” John said with a wry smile, “To think what my senses are telling me under such interrogation. You loom over me with your eyes so intense, you confuse me. My mind is like a pack of scattered cards.” 

“You confuse _me_ ,” said Shelley. He ran a hand through his hair and quite suddenly got up and walked across the room.   

John stared after him. 

“Leigh,” Shelley said, “I think we have quite worn out Mr Keats.” 

John was about to protest, but then realised that it was true. 

“I began the day very early I am afraid.” 

“Shelley clear your papers off the sofa then for John so he can lie down. You have done nothing but sit there all day reading and making a mess, it is the least you can do,” said Bess. 

“Bess thinks I am terribly idle,” said Shelley and sent a smile over to her, and went do to what he was bid. 

John was too tired to say anything at all. Shelley must think him dull as ditch water. 

The household said their goodnights and drifted away, all except Shelley who lingered, snuffing candles and picking up books. Why would he not just go for his starlit walk as he had said? John took off his waistcoat and unwound his cravat. Would he have to strip entirely naked for the man to take a hint? His head swam with exhaustion as he began to take off his boots. The left one stuck - it had never fitted properly - and he staggered, off balance. Suddenly Shelley’s arm was around his waist supporting him, with another hand under his elbow, and John felt a fleeting press of his body, and the silkiness of his hair against his cheek. He started to flush red and righted himself quickly, taking a step away. 

“Thank you Mr Shelley, I am quite alright,” he said. 

“Yes,” said Shelley, who was staring again. Then “Goodnight,” he said, and slammed out of the front door.

 

\-----------------------------

 

_To thirst and find no fill, -- to wail and wander, With short unsteady steps, -- to pause and ponder, --To feel the blood run through the veins and tingle, Where busy thought and blind sensation mingle, --To nurse the image of unfelt caresses, Till dim imagination just possesses, The half-created shadow, then all the night, Sick . . ._

\----------------------------

 

Shelley was driving John to distraction. 

Not in person, for he had not seen him for weeks. No, the man pestered him only in imagination. John felt fevered with the memory of Shelley’s arm on his waist, the scent of him and the brush of his hair against John’s cheek, and ran over and over what he might have done if he had not been so surprised, and how Shelley might have responded. 

They had met at Leigh’s a handful more times that last December and while John liked Mary very much, he still was not sure of Shelley. Other than he was hopelessly, overwhelmingly attracted to him. 

He had not been to Hunt’s or seen anyone at all since the new year. Even Haydon, who had wanted to paint him, had been laid low with a fever and had not written in weeks. Perhaps his career as a poet was over before it had begun. 

He stood now in the chilly operating theatre at Guys Hospital as the dresser on duty, trying to concentrate on anything but the turmoil in his head. 

It should not have been difficult. They were on parade today - in addition to the usual jostling crowd of medical pupils, two hundred tickets had been sold to the public to see Mr Astley Cooper remove a man’s leg. He himself had sharpened the saw that morning, and stood by with chloroform should the poor soul begin to awake. Between the noise the crowd was making, the stench of the room and Mr Cooper playing to the crowd with a series of terrible puns, he should not have been able to spare a thought for such concerns. 

But these lusts he felt were so...destroying. He had not been touched in so long.  He had warmed with a fellow medical student after lectures for a while a month or two ago, but the fellow only ever wanted John to stroke him through his trousers until he spent because he was so afraid of the clap. _Chance would be a fine thing_ , John thought. He was clean as a whistle, not that Henry would believe him. The boy was a horrible tease, kissing him until their lips were red and bruised, stroking him through his trousers and pressing against him for a half-hour at a time, but never laying a solitary finger on his naked flesh. He glanced at Henry now, sitting in the front row of the theatre, and Henry blushed to the roots of his hair and turned away. 

And now this stranger, this son of a baronet, with his cut-glass bone structure and his cut-glass accent, and his lean, rangy beauty, had sent him into a flurry of jealously and, and fucking, bloody, grinding _want_. It was too bad. 

_An expense of spirit in a waste of shame._

John wondered if Shelley enjoyed both men and women as he did. He could not think that it was so unusual. And Shelley would not be coy and only stroke chastely through clothing - no, the world knew about Shelley and his free love. He would want John to touch him, and he would certainly touch John back. Perhaps even take him entirely, like the fearless, handsome apothecary apprentice he had fucked and sucked with one whole glorious summer. His whole body burned at the thought. _Enough, enough of this._

“Mr Keats, your assistance, please,” said the surgeon in ringing tones. 

John stepped forward and began to remove the stained, oozing bandages which concealed the leg which was to be removed. The putrid smell of gangrene filled the theatre then, so strong that even John’s strong stomach was turned, and someone in the gallery fainted away. 

“...case of advanced gangrene, and you can smell the putrefying tissue…” 

_Shelley is no doubt lying with Mary just now_ , John thought as he cast aside the stinking cloth.  He threw down more sawdust to absorb the blood that would come. _Or some other eager girl_. He would certainly not be desperately trying not to vomit in front of an audience of hundreds. 

“...and so we shall remove it here, beneath the knee,” Mr Cooper announced. 

“Ohhhhhhh,” went the crowd as he applied the saw and he and John were splattered with blood. 

_Throw physic to the dogs; I’ll none of it_ , John thought, and wiped arterial blood from his eye. 

It proved to be a long operation and a long day. After attending Mr Cooper’s surgery, there was an anatomy lesson, and the corpse John and Henry were given to dissect had burst with maggots, sending Henry yelling across the classroom. He really was quite squeamish for a medical student. John had hoped to persuade him to come for a drink after lectures, but some things can dampen the most ardent ardour, and a handful of maggots was one such thing. 

Instead, John had slumped home in the January sleet, chilled to the bone and in a melancholic mood. Was this to be his life? Even his poetry recently had been full of despair. _Hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom._

He was home now though. Entering the parlour, he saw that his brothers had a decent fire going and some supper too - chops by the smell of it. 

“A letter came for you,” said George looking up. John nodded, but first took the lid from a bottle of gin and took a huge swallow. 

“How was the leg?” asked Tom. 

“Indescribable.” 

“And you a writer,” said Tom, kicking a fireside chair towards him which he collapsed into. 

His heart lifted as he saw Leigh Hunt’s handwriting on the letter George handed to him. And lifted again when he found inside an invitation to dinner the next day. “ _Bring some work with you_ ,” Leigh said “ _For Shelley stays and wishes to see more of it. He has seen your first canto of Endymion.”_

Shelley again. John cursed Leigh for showing him his unfinished work, then cursed him again for not telling him what Shelley had thought of it. 

But he would go to dinner, certainly. He would not sit by and let all Leigh’s time be monopolised by Mr Shelley - not one minute longer. He would be a poet and he would succeed, and if that meant putting up with Shelley then so be it. And of course to see him again might lay to rest the overwhelming fantasies he had been entertaining about him, for no living, breathing man could match up to what happened in his imagination. 

“John, there is a maggot on your sleeve you know,” said George. “It is rather disgusting.” 

Not one minute longer.

\--------------------

 

_Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites, Without a hope, a passion or a love, Who through a life of luxury and lies, Have crept by flattery to the seats of power, Support the system whence their honors flow. They have three words - Well tyrants know their use, Well pay them for the loan with usury, Torn from a bleeding world! -God, Hell and Heaven_

 

\--------------------

 

Shelley, Hunt and Haydon were arguing hammer and tongs when John arrived at Hunt’s the next afternoon; atheism, deism, Christianity and Shakespeare. John was swept into the fight as soon as he was through the door. 

Hunt paced the room, jiggling a fractious baby on his shoulder, gesticulating with his free arm, while another of his children sat under the table, playing with lead soldiers. Haydon sat in a threadbare armchair, thumping his knee with his fist to accentuate a point. 

Shelley sat on the window seat, his chin raised defiantly. Unobserved as he was, John drank him in while he could. His long legs were stretched out before him, there was an angry flush of colour in his cheeks and temper sparked in his eyes. John felt stabbed through by want of him and bit his lip. Their eyes met, but John looked quickly away. 

“Shakespeare was no Christian, you cannot prove otherwise,” Shelley was saying, sending Hunt and Hayden into a ferment of counter argument again. 

“You are infuriating,” roared Haydon. “I will gore you without mercy for that.” 

“What stuff you speak, Bysshe,” said Hunt. “The Prince of Denmark himself shall smash your argument into a thousand pieces, as soon as I find it.” 

He tried to scrabble through his muddled bookcases with one hand for a copy of Hamlet, but the baby struggled and cried. Shelley took the child from him with a practised hand, set it upon his knee and dangled his pocket watch for it to look at. “There, Swinbourne,” he said. “Let us give your papa time to try and prove me wrong. But he will not succeed.” Swinbourne grabbed the watch, solemnly putting it in his mouth, and Shelley smiled. He looked up at John. 

“You find us at odds again, Mr Keats,” he said. John crossed the room and perched beside Shelley on the window seat. Swinbourne took the watch from his mouth and offered it to John with a chubby hand. 

“You miss your own children,” John said, taking the watch, as Shelley dropped a kiss onto the baby’s head. 

“It is why I am here, without Mary. I am fighting Chancery for them,” Shelley said.   “And in between times, I like to fight Hunt and Haydon, as you see.” 

He looked directly at John and John could see the exhaustion and worry writ on his face. Perhaps he had not been having such a wonderful time while John worked. He had heard about the suicide of Shelley’s wife Harriet, and about the two small children she left behind. He had not thought Shelley had cared so very much for the family he abandoned. 

“I wish you luck,” said John. “My family’s affairs were entangled in Chancery for many years. It is a very hard thing.” 

“What do you make of this, Keats?” Haydon blustered. “That Shakespeare was as godless as this infidel here?” 

“Do not look to me,” John said, “I am no more in the right than other people on the subject of religion, I have nothing to say about it.” 

“I will take some air,” Shelley said. “Perhaps Mr Keats would accompany me.” 

“He has only just arrived!” said Haydon. 

“I am happy to,” said John. Hunt and Hayden would no doubt carry on the argument after Shelley departed, and John would rather be out of doors with a melancholic Shelley than trapped in a parlour holding a baby while the fight rumbled ever onwards. 

“Oh take Swinbourne with you, would you?” said Hunt distractedly. 

“Do you forget I am an infidel? I am not even permitted the care of my own children, I do not think I should be seen in public with someone else’s,” said Shelley, depositing Swinbourne firmly on Hayden’s lap. 

Once outside, Shelley looked lost. “Shall we climb the hill?” suggested John, setting off. 

It was a gloomy January day and they did not pass another soul before they reached the top of Parliament Hill. Nor did they speak a word to each other. Once at the summit, John sat against a fallen tree, breathing hard to catch his breath and looking out at the spires and smoke of London. Shelley tilted his face to the wind, raw and cold as it was, and closed his eyes. 

“Chancery is vile, Mr Keats,” he said. “The gallery is packed every day with hundreds of people trying to get a look at me. The prosecution rip me apart over things I do not care _that_ about,” he snapped his fingers, “But worst of all, they comb my poetry for evidence of my character. My poetry. It disgusts me. And they will take my children from me on the strength of it. I have not a hope against them, but I will fight them to the end. At least my children will know I did that much.” 

“Is there really no hope at all?” 

“None. What chance do I have? I abandoned their mother. I do not believe in any god, I do not have it in me, and I will not pretend. Even if I were to try, I am an infamous adulterer, atheist and republican. I married Mary,” he continued. “I thought it would help. And of course she will have our child soon, too. I never wanted to marry, not in the conventional sense. And here I am, twice a husband and not yet 25.” 

What a mess, though John. 

“Is there no way you could temper your politics, just for the trial? Say you have reformed?” 

“Why should I bend to their will? Why should not I have the views, the politics I have, and freely? It is nothing but tyranny. I will not submit to it. They rely on fear. But I know the will of strength is right and the people will not put up with it forever.” Shelley kicked the tree John sat upon. John hugged his knees against the cold. 

Perhaps Shelley was not just a rich young aristocrat, playing at politics, he thought. He seemed to be a true revolutionary. But though his principles were admirable, they did not lead to harmony in his personal life. And however much he loved ‘the people’ he had not treated his own wife very well. 

He could not help but feel a little sorry for him though. _Probably because he looks so poetic when he’s heartbroken. The blue shadows under his eyes, the sharp cheekbones and the bitten fingernails. Too beautiful, too vulnerable. You are a fool._

He shivered. 

“Let us go back,” said Shelley. “I have kept you here too long with my belly-aching.” 

The afternoon had grown dark as they battled the wind back down the hill and across the Heath. 

“And what of you Mr Keats? How goes Endymion?” 

“Call me John, please. It goes in fits and starts. But I plan to put together a volume of my earlier work and send it to the Olliers to publish.” 

Shelley said nothing for a few moments, and the only sound was the tramp, tramp of their feet through the sodden grass. Shelley spoke at last. 

“I do not think it is wise for you to publish your early poems, John. Perhaps wait, until Endymion is complete. It would be better.” 

John felt as though he had been kicked. 

“Has my work so little merit?” he managed. 

“It is nothing to do with merit. I have considerably more knowledge of the publishing world than you, and…” 

This again. John’s temper flared immediately. 

“Of course,” he said, “Someone like myself would be ignorant of such things. But you have met me more than once now and whatever you think of me, you must know I am not a stupid man. I thought to trust you. After you told me of your sorrows just now, I believed we could be honest with each other. Yet you patronise me with this nonsense.” 

“I am not doing that, it is not what I meant by it at all,” said Shelley, raising his voice at last. “I merely offered advice, I am not trying to patronise you, or suppress your work out of, of _jealousy_ or whatever nonsensical reason you have worked up in your head…” 

Of course Shelley would be above jealousy, when John’s whole being thrilled with it. He should never for a moment have thought that they could be friends at all. 

They had reached Leigh’s cottage again and John turned to Shelley, looking him in the eye. 

“You must realise why I wish to publish. You must have an idea of how desperately I wish to get away from that hospital, from the agony and death and the fucking...fucking _stench_ of it. It gets into your clothes, into your hair, into your skin; it is unbearable.” 

“You always smell very pleasant,” said Shelley. John clenched his fists at his sides. 

“Are you purposely trying to antagonise me?” He paced halfway up Leigh’s path and back again. How could he ever have been attracted to this infuriating, overbearing… 

“If you would but listen…” 

“So what is it, then? Did you lie when you said my poetry had merit?” 

“ _Merit_? John your poetry is…” Shelley seemed to grope for words. 

“I will not stand and watch you rack your brain for diplomatic words Shelley. I am going inside.” 

“Wait…” Shelley took him by the shoulder and whirled him around, which made John incandescent. 

“Do not think just because you have the advantage of size over me that you can treat me as you like,” John spat. “I am just as much a man as you are, as you will discover.” 

“For god’s…” Shelley flushed red with rage. He stepped towards John and John stood his ground. Suddenly Shelley grabbed John’s hat and threw it as hard as he could before striding off down the lane into the darkness. 

Well. That was just ridiculous. 

He found his hat, which had rolled into Hunt’s garden, and knocked on the door. 

“John!” Hunt said, ushering him in. “But where has Shelley got to?” 

“He...left. He knocked my hat off and...just left.” 

“Good lord, what were you talking of?” 

“We were arguing.” 

“He can be volatile, I suppose. His friend Medwin tells that he once stabbed another boy through the hand with a fork, at school. But then he was bullied dreadfully.” 

“Oh.” 

“You were not too mild-tempered at school yourself, so your friend Charles says,” Haydon said. “Some chap called Hammond? You knocked him down like a prize fighter.” 

“Mmm,” said John, wishing Charles did not have such a good memory. His fury had left him and he felt a little shaky. 

“I’m sure it will be alright, John,” said Leigh, seeing his face. “Shelley does not hold grudges. He goes up like a volcano but it does not last. You’ll see.”

 

 

\----------------

 

_When by my solitary hearth I sit, and hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom; When no fair dreams before my "mind's eye" flit, And the bare heath of life presents no bloom; Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed, And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head._

 

\------------------

 

 

John buried himself in work the week after the argument; both his studies and his poetry. Every time he thought of the fight with Shelley he felt hot all over and slightly sick. Had he been too harsh? Would Shelley now exclude him from the literary circle he had become part of? He did not know and could not bring himself to ask. 

But as the weekend approached he received the usual letters and invitations from Leigh, he dined with Haydon and went to the theatre with Severn, just as before. No one spoke to him of Shelley, and he did not speak of Shelley to anyone else. He followed the trial – which was going dreadfully – in the newspaper, and debated whether to write to him or not for weeks. 

And why did he care so much? Surely it was better that he did not see Shelley at all. Their attitudes towards everything were so different, and Shelley could be so overpowering, he did not want him to influence his work. Or, John forced himself to be honest, distract him any further with unfulfilled desires. 

None of this common sense, however, stopped him accepting an invitation from Leigh to accompany him to a ball, knowing that Shelley would be one of the party. And it did not stop his heart from leaping when he came back from the hospital one evening and found a letter with Shelley’s seal on it waiting for him. 

_Dear Mr Keats,  
_

_I hope that you are reading this and did not immediately throw it on the fire at the sight of my hand. I know that we did not leave on quite the best of terms and in fact you may think me quite mad – and you would not be the first.  
_

_I know I have waited an age to write, but I wanted to wait for my hot head to cool down, and of course I have been in blasted Chancery, facing the twin cannons of hypocrisy and tyranny. But we will see each other to-morrow evening and I would like to clear the air before then.  
_

_I did not explain myself well in our last conversation so I take a moment now to write everything out clearly. All else aside, I advised against the publication of your earlier work due merely to the expense to yourself.  
_

_I had taken the liberty of enquiring at a publisher on your behalf and I enclose the prices with this letter, which I had meant to give you on Sunday past, before we had words.  I had hoped to show you and offer my assistance in payment if you still wished to go ahead. I feel that would not now be welcome because of the clumsy way I went about it.  
_

_I wish to make plain to you how great I believe your abilities to be. I was lost for words at the use of ‘merit’ to describe your work, not because I was searching for diplomacy, but because merit does not being to encapsulate your genius. John, to read the opening stanza of Endymion depresses my spirits as much as reading Dante, because I cannot hope to emulate it.  
_

_Please believe me when I tell you that I did not mean in any way to cause you such offense. I hope you will accept my humblest apologies, and that I may remain,  
_

_Your sincere friend,  
_

_Shelley.  
_

_PS as to your hat, that was unfortunate, but I did not want to punch you on the nose as I am a pacifist. I will have it cleaned for you if you so wish it._

He could not help but smile at the postscript, it was so very Shelley. He thrilled at ‘genius’. Of course Shelley was making amends, and he was always dramatic, but, still. He felt relieved. Everything would not be awkward and awful as he had expected.

 

\----------------------------------

_Fill for me a brimming bowl, And in it let me drown my soul: But put therein some drug designed, To Banish Women from my mind_

 

\-------------------------------------

 

The night of the ball was awkward and awful, however, but through no fault of his or Shelley’s. 

Hunt and Haydon were being impossible. There had been some terrible falling out – Marianne said that Haydon had actually thrown ‘Bewicks History of British Birds’ at Leigh and given him a lump on the head – and they would not talk to each other at all. Any brave soul who tried to start a conversation withered and gave up in the face of their stony silences and glares. Everything was spikey and uncomfortable. 

Shelley nodded politely to John across the dinner table, his face unmoving and at its most aristocratic. He made no move to seek him out, and John wondered if he was still angry. It was odd – his letter had been so warm. He felt deflated. He had looked forward to this night but it seemed ruined already. 

By dessert, John could bear it no longer and excused himself to find a large brandy from somewhere. He found an amiable footman in the great entrance hall who agreed to fetch him one, and took a chair by the fire. 

He heard the tap tap of feet behind him and turned to look for the footman. It was Shelley. 

“I had to escape,” Shelley said. “It was quite dreadful.” 

“My god they are both awful.” 

“They have depressed my spirits,” Shelley said, sitting down. He casually took a bottle of laudanum from his pocket and drank deeply from it. 

They sat a long while in silence as the music struck up in the ballroom. John was bursting to say something but he did not know where to start and Shelley would not even look at him. His brandy arrived and Shelley spoke at last. 

“You look very well.” 

“Um. Thank you.” 

They lapsed into silence again. John gulped his brandy nervously. Why on earth had Shelley come to sit with him if he would not speak to him? To punish him? 

Shelley drank from his bottle again, and offered it to John, his eyebrow raised. 

John felt reckless. Why not? The night was ruined anyway. And he did not want Shelley to think him bothered in the slightest by his silent, distant treatment. Fuck it. 

He had taken small doses before for the pain in his throat and chest, but never for pleasure. He took the bottle and drank deeply from it before passing it back. Shelley drank again and then gave it back to John. “Finish it,” he said, “I have had plenty.” John did. 

He wondered when it would start to make him feel any different. 

Just when John thought he might take his chances back at the table with Haydon and Hunt, rather than suffer another second of silence, Shelley turned to him. 

“John I did not behave quite well when I saw you last,” he began. 

“My hat survived it.”   

“Oh god,” Shelley put a hand over his eyes. “I was...I lost my temper.” 

“It is of no consequence. Really. Your letter explained everything,” said John, joyous that they were talking at all. 

“The last thing I wanted was for us to have a falling out. You were quite right in every particular.” 

“Not quite in every particular. I should not have refused your advice so rudely.” 

“It does not matter in the least, John,” Shelley said, and his face thawed into a smile at last. “I should not have interfered. I have gone about it all wrong, as I have wont to do. You were not so very rude anyhow. You should hear how Byron talks to me.” 

“It is just...I wish to succeed on my own terms. I must find my own way. I am very happy to know you and talk with you, but I want to have a voice in my own right. I feel you would overshadow me.” 

“I am happy to know you too,” said Shelley. “And while I am better known now, it is for scandal and gossip, not for my work. I could not overshadow your brilliance for long. I know you have not liked me much, but I hope you will learn to tolerate me.” 

“I think that is very possible,” said John, feeling lightheaded. 

“Well,” said Shelley, smiling one of his most charming dimpled smiles. “That is a relief. I know I antagonise people, I always do. You, John, who are so pleasant, one of the pleasantest people I ever…” 

The end of the sentence was lost as Shelley slid out of his chair and onto the floor in a tangle of legs. 

“I hope you know I didn’t mean to. I never mean to, it just...happens. I, ohhhhhh, I want to...” Shelley began to laugh. 

John knew why, he felt the same; the laudanum was coming up in him in a rush of ecstasy. He could not stop smiling. He ran his hands through his hair and his fingertips left trails of sensation along his scalp. 

“Let’s...let’s...” He felt as though his mouth was not moving in time with his words, which made him laugh. He tried to lick his lips but his mouth was too dry. 

“I feel like I shall explode,” said Shelley. 

John too felt like he might go up like a firecracker. He got to his feet. Everything was too brilliant; too perfect. He felt as though light might burst from his fingertips and he held up his hands to make sure. This night, this wonderful night, with such music, and such friends. Where were their friends? He loved them all! He had to tell them so. 

And Shelley...dear Shelley did not mean to be so…he had been mistaken in thinking he was such an arse. He turned and smiled upon him. 

“What?” said Shelley, sitting up. 

“I thought you were an arse!” John said. 

“I am! I am an arse,” Shelley said giggling. He got to his feet and planted his hat on John’s head.  “You look beautiful. You are _beautiful_ John. You should keep my hat forever. It is my gift to you. My gift to the world is you, in that hat.” 

“You are beautiful too.” John took Shelley’s hand and held it up to his face. “You have the most beautiful circulatory system I have ever seen.” 

“Yes!” Shelley yelled. “YES! We are both beautiful! And the world is beautiful! Come on!” 

He dragged John by the wrist into the ballroom as the music surged up into a waltz. 

John was slammed with an even bigger rush of euphoria as he entered the press of the room, and the edges of the world blurred. It was incredible. The ballroom was all gilt and glitter and lush red velvet. A red-haired girl swung him into a dance and he felt like his face would split from smiling. He loved _everything_. Why did he ever spend a moment worried? Or afraid? There was nothing to fear, only to love. The music, the orchestra, it was...he spun and spun, changed partners, smiled upon the world. This was all he needed...To...love...the beauty of...the beauty… it was all...what had he? He had been trying to…he must try to remember... 

“John! Come with me!” a red hot and sweating Shelley emerged from the crowd and grabbed his shoulders, bundling him to the door. “I have to tell you...I have had such ideas! Wonderful thoughts - You must…” 

“Yes,” said John and buried his face for a moment in Shelley’s damp shirtfront. “I have had them too. We must…” he lifted his head again and looked at Shelley. “Your eyes are big,” he said. 

“So are yours. Big and...round.” 

“We. Are supposed to be bloody _poets_ ,” John said, starting to giggle. “ _Your eyes are big_.” Fucking marvellous stuff.” 

Shelley began to shake with giggles too. “Big and _round_ John. Don’t forget the powerful addition of ‘round’.” 

John leaned against him, laughing weakly. “Oh. Oh god.” Shelley put an arm around him. 

“What were we talking of?” he said. 

“When?” 

“Before your eyes were round.” 

“I...don’t remember.” Shelley’s arm was strong and warm around his shoulders and felt as if it was meant to be there. He would like to sit down with him a while perhaps and talk about...something. Important. He had such important things to say. He looked up at Shelley and Shelley looked down at him, and for a moment he thought he would kiss him, just to see what happened. But even the madness of the laudanum could not quite push him to do it. 

“Let’s go and drink wine.” 

“Yes! Yes.” 

They swayed their way into the hall and commandeered two bottles of wine before taking themselves to the window seat on the huge landing at the turn of the stairs and settling down, paying no mind to the stream of people passing them. 

It all made such sense, the world that night. He and Shelley talked intently with each other for hours, Shelley’s eyes even huger than usual, his cheeks flushed, his every feature brilliant with animation. Everything they said to each other was hilarious. Every so often Shelley would place a warm hand on John’s thigh to emphasise a point or John would grasp Shelley’s forearm to get his attention from whichever flight of fancy he was on and shivers of sensation would pass from each to each and make them laugh even more. Someone came by and jogged John’s elbow as he took a sip of wine, and Shelley ran a thumb along his lip to catch the spilled drops. It was too intense; John’s eyes closed as the sensation overcame him. 

“Did that feel nice?” said Shelley curiously. “Do it to me.” 

John cupped the side of Shelley’s face and brushed the pad of his thumb along Shelley’s lower lip. Shelley’s mouth fell open a little way and he gave a blissful sigh. John swallowed and wetted his lips, his head spinning again. 

“Yes, that feels…” Shelley nuzzled into John’s hand. “Mmm, I…” 

Another rush of people came by them then, and John reluctantly pulled his hand away. Shelley lost his train of thought again. 

“We should go somewhere and sleep,” he said. “Although I do not feel like I could ever again. Coleridge slept after laudanum and dreamt the whole of Kubla Khan.” 

“ _In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately Pleasure Dome decree,”_ John said. “I want a Pleasure Dome Shelley. Get me one, I know you can. You’re a fucking baron or something.” 

“I will ask father. He owns most of Sussex. He probably has a dozen.” 

“If he does not it is the most selfish thing I ever heard of. Do you hear that?” said John to two girls who passed on the stair. “His father won’t buy him a Pleasure Dome!” 

“And I am a fucking baron or something,” Shelley said. 

“Exactly! Exactly. _Fuck_. Fuck it.” John spilled wine over one of the girl’s shoes. 

“Are you Shelley?” one of the girls asked. “I believe you are, aren’t you?” She stared hard at him. 

“Hmm,” said Shelley, non-committal. 

A couple more people had stopped to listen. 

“I think it is him, you know,” said the other girl. 

“How many wives have you now, Shelley?” called out a man who had just climbed the stairs. “Can’t heathens have as many as they like?” 

“Oh! Is Byron here too? Tell me he is!” said the first girl. “I’d love to be ravished by Byron.” 

“Bella!” 

“What?” 

“Isn’t he too preoccupied with his own sister?” 

“Is that true, Shelley?” 

Shelley stood and finished the last of the wine. “Time to depart,” he said to John, pulling him to his feet. 

“Is _he_ Byron?” said one of the girls. 

John gave a sweeping bow of assent. Shelley raised his eyebrows. 

“If that _is_ you, Byron,” said a stout, red faced man who had huffed up to them, “Then I would like your address, for you owe me a hundred pounds for a gambling debt.” 

“Um,” said John. 

“Run, John,” said Shelley, taking his arm and yanking him down the stairs, two at a time. They pelted past the crowd at the bottom of the stairs and the footmen at the door and burst out onto the street, gasping and laughing. 

“How have you got so far in life without learning that the answer to ‘are you Lord Byron’ is always ‘No, absolutely not’?” said Shelley. 

“I have no idea.” 

The cold sent their hearts pumping and the laudanum surged in their veins again as they walked. Shelley was hallucinating a little and when he described what he could see, John could see it too. It was wondrous. They walked and walked – across Green Park, past the Palace, past Covent Garden. A fog began to curl around them and Shelley began to shiver. 

“Can we go to your lodgings John?” he said. “I would like to see where you live.” 

“Of course,” said John. 

They headed east towards Cheapside, Shelley producing a flask of gin to warm them as the fog and damp thickened. Shelley slipped his arm through John’s. “I am cold,” he said. 

John did not know what to make of it. 

“Are you sure? That you want to come to my rooms?” 

“Do not make me go back to Hampstead tonight,” Shelley said lightly, “I am half delirious.” 

“No! You are welcome, and I have some more gin…” he could not just let him come up. He had to be honest. He halted them both under a gas lamp so that he could see Shelley’s face. 

“Shelley.” Oh, the words would not come. 

“What is it?” 

John just stared at him. 

“It is the laudanum. Sometimes I think I am speaking but it is all in my head. You have not said anything,” said Shelley and gave John’s shoulders a little shake. 

“No! I…know I have not said anything. Just, just give me a moment.” He took a slug of gin. Right. He must say it. 

“Shelley, I like…men. And women too. But men. And you are…” 

Why. Why had he thought that he wanted to see Shelley’s face while he said this. John decided to finish his sentence with his eyes closed so that he could not see Shelley’s curious expression turn to disdain. 

“You are very attractive. To me. Even though you annoy me. Especially because you annoy me. So I wanted you to know that. Before.” 

“John,” said Shelley, and put a hand on his chest. John opened his eyes again. But Shelley was not pushing John away as he first thought, he was twisting his hand in the fabric of his coat, pulling him closer. Before John knew what he was doing, Shelley was dragging an open mouthed kiss across John’s jaw, and John moaned and found his mouth and kissed him back hard, his hand on the back of Shelley’s neck. God he tasted so…and he was pushing back against John now, turning him, and now he was against the wall with a knee between his legs and _fuck_ it felt good, with Shelley’s hands pulling at his shirt, his thigh hard as iron against his hardening cock and god he would let Shelley take him right here if…no… 

“ _Oh_ , We should not do this on the street, it is not safe,” John said, barely able to take his mouth off the other man to speak. “Come inside.” 

Somehow they got through the door and up the stairs, despite every few steps Shelley pushing him against the bannister and kissing him again. 

At the door to John’s rooms they paused. “My brothers are asleep,” John whispered. “My room is on the right. Just move quietly.” 

As soon as they tried to do so though, it became apparent how drunk they still were. He had also reckoned without Shelley’s height and long limbs, before he could prevent it, Shelley had elbowed a picture off the wall and knocked over the fire irons. 

Tom appeared at the door of his room, hair on end. 

“It is five o’clock in the morning,” he said. “Which of you would like to die first?” 

“Don’t worry. I am a Baron and I will pay for any damage,” said Shelley. 

“The devil you are. Who is this really, John?” 

“It’s Shelley. Don’t worry.” 

“I thought you didn’t _like…”  
_

“Shut up Tom, shut up, shut uuup,” said John trying to get over to his brother to muffle him. Shelley began to laugh. 

“It is alright Tom, I know all. He thought I was an arse, which I am, and now he thinks I have a beautiful circulatory system.” 

“Which you do,” said John. “And a very healthy digestive tract.” 

“He says that to all the boys,” said Tom. “John if you _have_ to then can you keep it quiet? He seems like he’d be...noisy.” 

“Whatever does he mean John?” said Shelley, grinning mischievously. “Are you going to _interfere_ with me?” 

But John had slumped onto his bed. He wanted to interfere with Shelley, very much indeed. But the pull of unconsciousness was so much stronger. His head spun like a spinning top. With a sigh he lay down and gave into it. _A_ _drowsy numbness pains my sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk…_

 

 

\-------------------------

 

_A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:_

_Its loveliness increases; it will never_

_Pass into nothingness; but still will keep_

_A bower quiet for us, and a sleep_

_Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing._

_\-----------------------------_

 

 

He awoke the next morning with one of Shelley’s long legs hooked over him and an arm thrown around his waist, as if he were sharing a bed with a large warm cat. John blinked at the dull winter light coming through the half drawn curtains. Shelley stirred against him and with a trickle of panic John wondered if he would remember John kissing him. Or the things he had said. He had been perfectly happy about it last night, but in the cold light of day... 

He wondered what the time was. He stretched out an arm and managed to hook Shelley’s pocket watch from his waistcoat abandoned on the floor and squinted to read it in the half light. 

He thumped his head back down on the pillow. “Oh God. I am supposed to be at the hospital in half an hour.” 

He could not go. Not possible. He felt as though he had been poisoned. 

“Shhhh, John. Quiet, quiet,” said Shelley, nuzzling into his neck. 

“Dr Lucas plans to do two operations. I am meant to assist.” 

“John I will give you _a thousand pounds_ to stop talking.” 

“JOHNNY!” yelled Tom from the hallway. 

“My god,” muttered Shelley and slid under the sheet, feigning unconsciousness. Tom banged through the door, grinning as he saw his brother. John scrubbed a hand across his face. He could not bear even this much reality. 

“You are due at the hospital at 10 o’clock, you know. What on earth did you and the Mad Baron do last night? I have never seen you in such a state.” 

“Laudanum.” 

“Idiots. What about work?” 

“It’s fine. It’s all fine. I’m just not going to go.” There. Problem solved. In here was safe; out there was bad. 

“Do they know you are not going to go?” 

“I…” John bit off the rest of his sentence. Shelley, still feigning sleep, had slipped his hand beneath the waistband of John’s smallclothes and had begun to stroke slow, tingling circles on his stomach. 

“Because they will most likely sack you. And if they do then I have a friend who would like the job, so, if you really do not want to go...” Tom rattled on. 

Shelley’s fingertips just grazed the tip of John’s cock. Jesus fucking fucking _Christ_. The blood sang in his ears as he tried not to cry out. 

“Tom,” he croaked. “Bugger off will you. We’re sleeping.” 

“Suit yourself,” said Tom and left, banging the door on his way out. Seconds later the front door banged too. 

They were alone. 

John turned and looked at Shelley, who smiled at him mischievously. 

“Why so shocked?” he said. “Do you not remember last night?” 

John let out a breath. “I thought it was the laudanum, or the wine.” 

Shelley just shook his head. _Thank god._ He dropped his mouth to John’s and grazed his lips gently across his, and a jag of pure want made John moan out loud. John caught a handful of Shelley’s curls and pulled his face down, kissing him violently, pushing his tongue against the other man’s, biting on his lower lip. In answer Shelley kissed back hungrily, his breath coming in short gasps as John pushed back against him, hands on his waist and then his back and then in his hair again. John’s cock was achingly hard between them and Shelley ran a practiced hand up and down it. 

“You...you have done this before.” 

“John,” Shelley breathed against his mouth, “I went to Eton, then Oxford, and I spent last summer with Byron. You should be amazed I know what a woman’s body looks like at all.” He rolled his hips against him. “Touch me, for god’s sake.” 

“You and Byron,” said John. 

“He is a terrible creature. I will show you some of the filthy, dreadful things he asked me to do some other time.” 

John felt hot all over at the thought and pushed his thigh against Shelley’s cock in retaliation, enjoying the moan he wrought from the other man. 

“Show me now,” he said. 

Shelley grazed his lips along John’s and bit down on his bottom lip. 

“Anything?” 

“Yes, anything. You can do anything.” He looked up at Shelley who let a shaky breath out, his eyes black and half closed with lust. 

“My god, John, you...Just remember that you asked for it,” he said hoarsely.  John nodded. 

“Sit up,” Shelley said.  John did and Shelley pushed him back hard against the headboard. “You are going to suck me,” he said. “Byron would tie me to make sure, but I want to feel your hands on me.” 

The thought of Shelley tied to Byron’s headboard with his mouth full of cock almost ended John then and there. 

“ _Fuck_ , Shelley,” he breathed. 

Without a word, Shelley stripped off the remainder of his clothes. Though he looked slim when dressed, his body was lean and strong and lightly muscled, with a dusting of hair from his chest to his cock. John took a shaky breath. 

Shelley’s cock already hard. He was big, of course. Part of John’s mind registered wryly that he should not have expected anything else. The rest of his mind focussed on how the hell he was going to get it in his mouth. 

“Sometimes I would come just from having him in my mouth,” Shelley continued, leaning over John, kissing him slowly, then dipping his head to lick, then suck one of John’s nipples. _Shit, yes_. John arched against Shelley’s mouth. 

“He did not like that though, he preferred me to come with his cock inside me. If I came too soon I would be punished. You won’t come too soon, will you?” He sucked the other nipple into his mouth and John made an incoherent sound and tangled his fingers in Shelley’s hair. Shelley began kissing and biting his way down John’s chest and stomach. 

John was fully hard now, leaking onto himself, and knew that even the merest touch of Shelley’s mouth on his cock would send him close to the edge. But Shelley’s kisses stopped with a nip to his hipbone, he then merely unlaced his smallclothes and laid John bare. Even that slight touch sent John bucking up against Shelley’s hand, panting. His cock rolled against his stomach. 

“You are so very ready for this aren’t you? Look at you.” John flushed. 

Shelley straddled him, tracing the head of his cock around John’s lips. John licked the underside slowly and felt Shelley shudder. 

“John. Open up.” It was almost an order. 

“What will you do if I don’t?” He had meant it as a challenge but there was nothing but need in his voice. Shelley heard it too. He slid his fingers into John’s hair and tugged his head back roughly, pressing his cock against John’s cheek. 

“Then I’ll have to treat you as Byron treats me,” he said with a slight smile. “Like a toy to play with.” 

_Oh god._ And suddenly John wanted this exactly. Wanted Shelley to give him orders and hold him down, take him as hard and as roughly as he could.  All this time he had fought against this very thing; being used as a plaything by a rich young man. And here he was, practically begging for it. 

He opened up obediently and sucked the head of Shelley’s cock into his mouth. Shelley shuddered and panted, gripping the headboard. John wrapped his hands around Shelley’s thighs and tugged him forward a little, taking him inch by inch into his mouth. 

“ _Ohhh_ , yes. All the way.”  his fingers were still tangled in John’s hair, yanking his head down more firmly onto it. He swallowed Shelley down as deeply as he could, abandoning himself to the tug of Shelley’s hand, opening up, taking him. Shelley fucked his mouth slowly, sliding almost all the way out before slowly pushing back in again. John pressed his tongue to the underside of his cock, looking up to see his reaction. Their eyes met and he was gratified to hear Shelley’s breathing go ragged. 

“I wish you could see how you look. It is too…” 

John cupped Shelley’s balls and sucked Shelley in harder and faster. The noises Shelley was making were enough to keep him on the brink of coming himself, but he wanted to last just a little longer. He pulled his head back, concentrating his lips and tongue on the head of Shelley’s cock, wrapping his hand around the base, stroking him. 

“Oh John, you… _Oh_.” With a groan Shelley pulled away from him, leaving John licking his lips, feeling empty. “I cannot continue, I will spend,” he said, taking quick, shaky breaths. “And I have so much more I wish to do to you.” 

He pulled John down onto the bed and lay beside him, then began kissing him with slow, sensuous kisses until he thought he’d lose his mind. 

“What else do you…what else am I to do?” John murmured, arching his whole body against Shelley’s lean length. 

But Shelley was still kissing him softly, biting along his jaw and down his neck, brushing his thumbs over John’s nipples and then down to drag fingertips over his aching cock and away again. Everything too gentle, too light, teasing, taunting; just enough to send him moaning and begging but not enough to give real pleasure. 

“ _Fuck_ , Shelley, will you just…just.” 

“Now I want you to put your fingers inside yourself,” Shelley said.

John’s looked at Shelley with shock. His first instinct was _no_. He could not do something so intimate, not in front of Shelley, nor anyone. 

“I want to see you,” Shelley said, dragging his thumb teasingly slowly around the head of John’s cock until John could have screamed. “I know you have done it before. It will make you ready. I am going to fuck you in a minute, and I won’t be gentle with you then.” 

John’s eyes closed at the thought and he put two fingers in his mouth, sucking them. 

“That’s it. Now put them in.” 

John bent his knees up. God was he really going to… 

He pressed the first finger inside and moaned, biting his lip. It was tight but it slid in easily. 

“You can touch yourself,” said Shelley and John wrapped his fist around himself and began to tug in slow hard strokes. 

“Now the other.” 

“Shelley, get the oil.” 

John gestured to the jumble of medicine bottles on the mantle. 

“This?” 

“Yes.” 

Shelly bent over him and drizzled the oil over John’s hand. John pushed his now slick finger inside to join the first and breathed out hard. God he felt so exposed, his legs spread like this, full of his own fingers, hard and leaking. He moved his fingers inside himself, bucking up into his own hand. 

“Look at me,” Shelley said. With an effort, John raised his eyes to Shelley’s, his mouth open, panting. This was _obscene._ But it felt too good to stop, and he stroked himself harder, watching Shelley watching him, watching Shelley stroking his own hard cock, slicking the oil along it, his muscles tense, his head thrown back and his throat, _oh,_ he…oh, he was so close, so… 

“You love this, don’t you? I knew you would be filthy. Byron would make me take three fingers, watch me struggle to take them,” Shelley said. “But I cannot wait a moment longer. Take your hands off yourself.” 

It took a Herculean effort for John to stop at that moment but somehow he did. Shelley wasted no time. He threw John over onto his front, lined himself up and pushed in hard and fast, not giving John a moment to breath. 

“Fuck. Oh, _yes_ ,” he said, pinning John down with long, slow strokes as John moaned beneath him. 

John felt so full, my god he was so _big_. He could feel his orgasm starting to build, his cock dragging under him against the bedsheets as Shelley fucked him. He could not last much longer, he did not know how to. It was too good, it was…oh he was going to, _yes_ he was going to… 

Suddenly Shelley yanked his hips up, away from the friction of the mattress. 

“Not yet, not till I’ve finished,” he growled into John’s ear. “Byron would never have allowed it.” 

John swore in frustration, his cock bobbing uselessly between his stomach and the bed. 

“At least touch me, you bastard,” he gasped. “Christ, _please_ , I…” 

“Not. Yet,” said Shelley, biting him lightly on the shoulder, sending a shudder of sensation though him. He wriggled his hips out of Shelley’s grasp, tried to get a hand to his own cock. 

“I see I shall have to tie you,” Shelley said and twisted John’s arms behind his back, sending John gasping and struggling.  A moment later John felt a cold narrow chain around his wrists. 

“This is my pocket watch,” said Shelley. “It is a family heirloom and if you break it my father will throw you in his dungeon. So you must keep your arms still and do not try to free yourself.” 

“My _god_ Shelley you twisted fucking…” He could not support himself now and could only succumb to Shelley completely, a thought which almost made him come instantly. He panted and squirmed, arse in the air and full of Shelley, unable to press his cock against anything, or get any kind of relief from the iron grip of Shelley’s hands on his hips. He could not imagine what he must look like, so desperate for release. 

“Shit… _please_.” 

“I love seeing you like this,” Shelley, pressed deep inside him but not moving. “So helpless.” 

“Will you move, for _fuck’s_...” 

Shelley began fucking in earnest now; none of the slow, hot strokes he had begun with. Just deep hard thrusts thudding into him, faster and faster, until John could only choke out sobbing moans into the pillow. God. _God._ He loved being taken like this, pushed face down onto the mattress and held there, fucked raw. Rough and hard, edging John’s aching, leaking cock closer to release. 

Shelley’s thrusts had lost their rhythm and he was panting hard now, his stomach and chest slick with sweat. 

“Fuck, _fuck_.” 

He hammered into John for a brief moment more before collapsing against him with a groan that shook through both of them. John could feel Shelley pumping into him and tried desperately to get a hand to his own cock, but he could not free himself and came untouched, shuddering and cursing Shelley. 

They collapsed one on the other, gasping for breath. John felt a tug at his wrists as Shelley freed his hands. John turned then and kissed Shelley thoroughly, his cock smearing between their stomachs. Shelley propped himself on and elbow and looked down at John, pushing sweat drenched curls out of his eyes. 

“Tell Byron, next time you write,” said John, when he could speak, “That he is completely and utterly filthy and should be strung up immediately. Tell him that from me.” 

“I most certainly will not, he’d be far too pleased with himself.”   

“I am also completely and utterly filthy but in another sense. I expect you and Byron would just jump into Lake Geneva after...this.” 

“Sometimes. If I could walk,” Shelley said and kissed the corner of John’s mouth. John kissed him back lazily, feeling drunk with release. “I did not hurt you I hope.” 

“No. I have never felt better...oh,” John yawned enormously. A huge tiredness swept over him and he could feel his eyes drooping closed. He should get up, wash, find something to eat. But bed was so comfortable and Shelley so comforting that he could not quite manage it. Perhaps in a moment…”I just have to…close my eyes for a moment.” 

He slept. 

When John awoke it was night again. The room was unusually bright, having been lit by not only John’s oil lamp, but a number of candles as well. 

Shelley was bent over the fire and the old tin bath had been dragged through and set in front of it. He looked over and saw John watching him. 

“I thought you might want a bath so I began heating water,” he said. “I did not realise then that sometime during the Crusades a Keats ancestor bought the biggest bath in England and had handed it down from eldest son to eldest son ever since - nor that it would take six thousand kettles of water to fill it.” 

“It is not all that old. I suppose you bathed in a tub made of gold, attended by a footman.” 

“Two footmen actually,” Shelley replied, and John could not tell if he was joking. 

“Well, it is done at last,” Shelley said, tugging his shirt over his head. 

They attempted to get in together at first, one at each end. But however Shelley folded or rearranged his legs it could not be done, until they gave up, in fits of giggles, and John slid into the bath at Shelley’s end and settled between his thighs. 

“For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings,” quoted Shelley. 

“Very well,” said John, leaning back against him. “Tell me a story of the death of a king.” 

“I have a new one,” Shelley said, dropping a kiss to John’s temple.

He began, dipping the sponge into the water and squeezing it over John’s chest. “ _I met a traveller from an antique land who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies_.” 

“Like me this morning,” said John, half turning to Shelley and kissing him in the hollow of his throat. Shelley laughed and drizzled warm water over them both. “Do go on going on.” 

“ _And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is_ _Ozymandias_ _, King of Kings;_

_Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.”_

John sighed happily and let his head fall back against Shelley’s shoulder. “I wish I did not admire your work so much,” he said. “I am sickeningly jealous of you and it will make you big-headed.” 

“Let me hear some of yours, then.” 

“If I do I am convinced you will think it so brilliant you will steal it,” said John. 

“How do you know I have not already? Your desk there is littered with writing.” 

“Did you read it?” said John. 

“All I could find were some rhymes which went; “ _roses are red, violets are blue, isn’t Shelley handsome, bet he has a big one, too._ ” 

“That does not even scan,” said John, and squeezed the sponge into Shelley’s face. Shelley chuckled and shook wet hair out of his eyes. 

John lifted one of Shelley’s hands and looked at it in the candlelight, admiring the composition of perfectly formed bones and healthy fingernails. He sighed. 

  “I know we have made a safe haven here away from the world today,” said John. “But what of Mary? We are hurting her, surely.” 

“I love her,” said Shelley simply. “And she loves me. And we know each other better than anyone else ever has. We are both free to love others as we please, and we both do. There is complete understanding between us.” 

John wondered how this could be true. 

“If we were to continue though. Would we keep it a secret from her?” 

“Well, we shall never know. Mary and I are going to Italy, John. Very soon, as soon as this latest tangle in Chancery is dealt with. England is not for me any longer. And Mary is miserable here now.” 

John was surprised to find he felt a mixture of relief and sadness. Fucking Shelley had been, well, _glorious,_ but he did not think he could enjoy a life of secrecy, scandal and broken hearts. 

“Other than the Hunts and a handful of others we are shunned by society,” said Shelley. “I know the fault lies with me and my work. Did you know that they arrested the man I paid to distribute my essay ‘On Christianity’? Blasphemy and sedition they say. I will be next. I saw how Leigh suffered in prison. I cannot stay.” 

“Well,” said John, not wishing Shelley to dwell too long on the wretchedness of society. “I will make the most of you for now.” He turned and slid his legs around Shelley’s waist, kissing him. “According to my textbooks, the refractory period of an adult male is directly proportional to his age. I believe I will conduct a series of experiments on you to aid my medical studies.” 

“I will gladly assist,” said Shelley, and pulled John down on top of him.

 

\---------------

_Four Seasons fill the measure of the year; There are four seasons in the mind of man: He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear, Takes in all beauty with an easy span: He has his Summer, when luxuriously, Spring's honied cud of youthful thought he loves, To ruminate, and by such dreaming high, is nearest unto heaven_

 

\----------------

 

It was May before he saw Shelley again as he and Mary went to Italy only a week after the night of laudanum. Shelley wrote John long, descriptive letters full of sincere friendship and encouragement, as well as praise for his work. But John longed to see him in person, even just for a moment. 

When Leigh brought news that the Shelley’s would be visiting that spring, John was overjoyed. There was to be a picnic on the Heath for all of them, and John hoped to be well enough to attend. His health had suffered that spring and he had been laid up in his room, writing incessantly. 

But when the time came he felt fit and well and spent the walk to Hampstead in nervous anticipation. 

There were all his friends, gathered by the ponds as they said they would be. There were the Shelleys looking brown and healthy and wonderful. He felt himself begin to smile. 

“For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground…” called Shelley as he approached. 

“...and tell sad stories of the death of kings,” finished John.   

“Oh are you another who knows 'Richard II’ inside out and back to front?” asked Mary. “I don’t think a week goes by but Shelley invites someone to talk of dead Kings with him.” 

John raised his eyebrows at Shelley who bit down on a grin and looked away. Perhaps they would not have a chance to talk alone, but these moments were almost enough. 

The picnic was most pleasant. Keats felt remarkably well, his breathing easy in his chest for once. He lay back upon a pillow, letting his eyes drift closed in the warmth. He could hear a little violin music drifting from a window in one of the houses overlooking the Heath, and felt replete with fruit and wine. 

Haydon barked a laugh. “My God, John. Look at Shelley.” 

John sat up. 

Shelley had evidentially had enough of the picnic and had gone for a bathe. And in his habitual way, had not remembered where he had left his clothes and was walking around the bathing pond without a stitch on, completely unconcerned. 

“Bysshe!” called Mary, half laughing. “This is London, not Italy. Cover yourself for heaven’s sake, or get back in.” 

But Shelley had stopped stock still, staring up at a skylark flipping and soaring in the blue afternoon sky. With his head tilted back, his arms loose by his sides, he was utterly free from self-consciousness. _Adam before the fall_ , John thought. His mouth dried as he took in the details of Shelley’s lips slightly parted, his lean but muscled body. His eyes closed over a vivid memory of that body in his own bed. 

“Oh my gracious, I believe he is composing,” said Mary, her merry face belying her exasperated tone. “John, do something with him, he will listen to you.” 

“I don’t suppose he will, you know,” said John. But he stood. 

“I cannot get up,” she said, putting her hand on her rounded stomach. “Take him back in and find his clothes. Talk poetry to him until he is dressed again.” 

John felt his heart beat faster as he walked towards Shelley. Shelley had turned slightly, so at least he would not be faced with...everything. 

he could hear Mary still talking to the others behind him. “Did I tell you the time I had visitors to our house by Lake Geneva and he came past the window just as he is now…” 

The voices faded behind him as he approached Shelley, still motionless, lost in thought. 

He was loathe to interrupt him. He knew how painful it was when it happened to him, when he was on a flight of invention and a landlady came about a laundry bill, or his brother wanted to know if he’d chip in for coal or why he’d used the last candle without asking. 

But Shelley interrupted himself. 

“John,” he said with a smile. “You are just who I would wish to talk to.” 

“And I am happy to do so,” said John, “But my friend, you are very very naked. Mary wishes you to cover yourself.” 

“Oh!” said Shelley impatiently and turned towards him. John swallowed. 

“My clothes are somewhere about. I was looking for them.” 

“I’ll help you.” 

“Wait - don’t you want to bathe? You should, it feels glorious. I will come back in with you.” 

“I…yes. I will.” 

Shelley had already plunged back into the pool and was splashing around in the shallows. He could not quite swim, it was obvious, but he gloried in the water nevertheless. John walked around to the far bank and slipped out of his clothes. 

“What were you dreaming into being back there?” he called to Shelley. 

“Oh…that bird. Is it a swift?” 

“The skylark?” said John, and sat down on the edge of the pond. 

“Yes! The most beautiful thing. It is the utter sensation I must capture,” Shelley said. “It is joyous. But the meaning...” 

“You do not need a concrete meaning,” John said. “The meaning must be understood through the senses. The point of diving into this pond,” John kicked water at Shelley, who retaliated, “is not immediately to swim to the edge, but to be in the pond, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. It is an experience beyond thought.” 

“But the reason it gives me joy surely must be examined.” 

“No! You cannot dissect a poem as you do a corpse,” John said. “Sensation should not be analysed.” 

He lost his train of thought as Shelley approached him, a mischievous look in his eye. 

“John.” 

“…You must allow uncertainty, when you have beauty. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept the mystery,” John finished. “ _Oh_ …” 

For Shelley had placed himself between John’s legs and was pressing kisses to the hinge of his jaw bone. 

“I will have beauty, then,” Shelley murmured, and pulled him forward off the muddy bank by his thighs. John gasped as he slid into the water and Shelley pulled him tightly towards him, his cock hard and slipping against John’s stomach.   

“You see what you do to me,” Shelley said. “It is not just your words; it is how you look when you are saying them. It makes me so...” 

John could see, and felt light-headed with want for him. His senses were overwhelmed; the feel of Shelley’s firm, warm body against his, the cool of the pond surrounding him; the smell of sun-heated skin; the taste of wine on his tongue; the glitter of the sun on the water, Shelley’s eyelashes wet and starred around his eyes; the skylark singing on and on. 

Shelley slid his hand between them and wrapped his long fingers around both their cocks, pressing them together, and began to stroke. John buried his face in Shelley’s neck; he knew he would only last moments. He could hear the small, needy sounds he was making, and the ragged breathing of Shelley, and _oh_ the slippery hardness of Shelley against him, and Shelley’s free hand biting into his waist; oh it was…he was… 

Shelley kissed him as he came, and carried on kissing him as he came himself seconds later. They stood entwined together in the water for a moment, breathing hard. 

“Shelley, I…” 

“Wait. Someone comes.” 

They broke apart just as Leigh and Haydon appeared, taking running jumps into the pond, sending waves of water in all directions. John decided to escape the onslaught, and dressed and took himself back to their party to sit in the sun. 

He was awoken a couple of hours later by Leigh nudging him with his foot. 

“We are packing up, John. I did not want to leave you snoring here.” 

“Was I…” John propped himself up on his elbows, blinking in the evening light, his hair tumbled in his eyes. 

“You weren’t snoring Johnny. You looked so peaceful, we none of us wanted to disturb you,” said Bess. 

“Have the Shelley’s gone?” 

“No. Shelley left word for you to meet him on Parliament Hill,” said Hunt. 

The sun was low in the sky as John began to climb. 

As he rounded the last curve of the path he could see Shelley crouched on the ground, working on something. 

“Shelley!” he called out. 

“Here, help me,” Shelley said as a greeting. He was kneeling amid a pile of unlit fire-lanterns, tying a tiny scrolled piece of paper to each. 

“Well. Hello. What are you…” 

“I am distributing pamphlets on the Reform of the Vote.” 

“And you believe this is the best way to…” 

“Can you think of a better? No one can be arrested for this. They cannot be traced other than to me, and I will be gone before they know it. Please just hold this while I light it.” 

John grinned and complied. They lit lantern after lantern; falling into an easy rhythm together. 

He stayed for an hour in the growing darkness, watching Shelley’s pamphlets sail away, till they were merely points of light above the trees of the Heath. He wondered which of the wealthy families who lived in Highgate would find a pamphlet in the morning and be shocked by its radical contents. Shelley barely spoke a word; he was in one of his intense, silent moods, cheeks flushed, biting on his lip. John wondered if he’d remembered to eat that day. Unlikely. 

Shelley stood looking out over the Heath. “It is beautiful, is it not,” he said at last. 

He was beautiful himself, John thought. Shelley stood at the brow of the hill looking like something dreamt up by Sir Walter Scott and painted by Botticelli. Young Lochinvar crossed with Saint Sebastian. 

“ _A savage place_!” Shelley quoted softly. “ _As holy and enchanted; As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted_.” 

“You forgot the part about the demon lover. I saw him, yesterday,” said John, “Not the demon lover - Coleridge. In Mill Lane. We walked together awhile. That is to say he swept me up along with him and I bobbed in his wake as he told me of nightingales, mermaids - did you know Southey believes in them? - dreams, monsters, ghosts...I could barely follow, he was…I mean, it is the laudanum I suppose, but…” John tailed off as Shelley turned to him. 

“Shelley, should we go?” he said. 

“Wait awhile,” Shelley said softly, and took John’s hand. It was a sweet gesture – John could not think that anyone had ever taken his hand before. 

Shelley took out his pocket watch and looked at the time. John looked at it and glancing up, caught Shelley’s eye. Shelley smiled at him. 

“I have never used it for that purpose again,” he said. 

“More’s the pity,” said John, and was pleased to see Shelley blush slightly. 

“I will miss this place,” he said. “I miss my friends. You should come to Italy, John – what is to stop you?” 

“It is a kind thought. You would distract me too much.” 

Shelley nodded. 

“You are most likely right. We would distract each other. Our work is the thing. It has to be.” 

“It is. It is everything.” 

“I will watch your great success from Italy. You must take care of yourself. Yours is a most valuable life.” 

“I hope so. I wonder sometimes.” 

_“What benefit canst thou do, or all thy tribe, to the great world? Thou art a dreaming thing, a fever of thyself_.” 

“I wrote that,” said John, surprised. 

“Yes, you did. And I read it. Just underneath “ _Roses are red, violets are blue, isn’t Shelley_ …” 

John shut him up with a kiss. 

“Anyway,” said Shelley. “We poets can do great benefit – why we are the unacknowledged legislators of the world!” He sat down and took a bottle from his pocket. “Now. Laudanum?” 

John joined him on the grass with a grin.

 

 

_Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live; And in my heartless breast and burning brain, That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive_

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I won't go through and point out every single little detail, but here are a few bits and pieces:
> 
> 1\. According to his brother, John Keats really would do a very good impression of a boxing bear on request  
> 2\. John's nickname really was 'Junkets'.  
> 3\. Leigh Hunt had ten children, which is why they are all over the place  
> 4\. Shelley apparently regularly began conversations with 'For god's sake, let us sit upon the ground..." (Shakespeare, Richard II, Act 3 scene II)  
> 5\. He also really did send off his writing in fire lanterns so he wouldn't get caught.  
> 6\. All the stuff about Byron is most likely true. 
> 
> The poems quoted, in order, are:
> 
> How many bards gild the lapses of time! - John Keats  
> On First Looking into Chapman's Homer - John Keats  
> Give Me Women, Wine and Snuff - John Keats  
> Keen, fitful gusts - John Keats  
> To Thirst and Find No Fill - Percy Shelley  
> An expense of spirit in a waste of shame - William Shakespeare, sonnet 129  
> Throw physic to the dogs - William Shakespeare, Macbeth Act 5, scene III  
> Queen Mab - Percy Shelley  
> To Hope - John Keats  
> Fill for me a Brimming Bowl - John Keats  
> Kubla Khan - Samuel Taylor Coleridge  
> Endymion - John Keats  
> Ozymandias - Percy Shelley  
> The Human Seasons - John Keats  
> The Fall of Hyperion - John Keats  
> Adonais - Percy Shelley  
> Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, Isn't Shelley Handsome etc - Lord Byron.


End file.
